On Rahere Ward

As I left for the Hospital at 5.45 this morning I grabbed a book, the Abbe de Tourville's Letters of Direction, subtitled "Thoughts on the Spiritual Life". For years and years it had been shelved at the bottom of my bookcase, but the collapse of a couple of shelves under the weight of reference books has led to some reshelving and it was lying on my desk. Henri de Tourville (1842-1903) spent eight years as a priest in Paris, wore himself out, and spent the remainder of his life as an invalid. But his ministry did not cease and he became an influential spiritual director. The little book gathers material from his letters under various headings; it was first published in English in 1939, with an introduction by Evelyn Underhill. One passage had particular relevance this morning:

Do not be anxious about death even though you feel it to be imminent and have every reason for despair, but give yourself up all the more to the mercy of God. No one, not even the saints, can do anything else. They can only confide themselves hopefully to God. Death is frightening only when it is far off, and it is useless to think of it from our present standpoint. I have seen many people die, and not one of them had the slightest fear of death once it was there.

Anonymous cowards

Many internet bulletin boards allow anonymous postings with participants choosing a name, perhaps expressive of their outlook or personality, or employing an avatar. One such site that I read from time to time and to which I, like a number of other users, contribute in my own name, allows anonymous contributions. The contributors use such non-identifiable pseudonyms as “undercover”, “horseradish”, “inferno”, “busybee”. One frequent contributor has adopted the persona of “Herr Doktor Pangloss”, Voltaire’s professor of "métaphysico-théologo-cosmolonigologie" and self-proclaimed optimist in Candide.

Another is calls himself “hamlet” and is, as I understand it, in internet parlance, an anonymous coward — someone who uses posts to make critical comments about other people, hiding behind a cloak of anonymity. The best thing to do with anonymous letters is to burn or shred them, giving no credence to what is written because the reader cannot know the credentials of the writer. “Credentials” are those things that entitle a person to be believed. The anonymous have no right to be believed and when anonymity is used to slander than the perpetrator is rightly labelled as a coward.

“Hamlet” is the pseudonym of this coward. Shakespeare’s character of that name is melancholy, introspective and of such a scrupulous nature that he is irresolute and dilatory in action. In order to escape the suspicion that he is a threat to the new king, Claudius, he counterfeits madness. The rest of the story is too well known to require commentary, other than to say that Hamlet, and nearly every other character, is dead before the curtain falls. What sort of person, we might ask, would choose “Hamlet” as a pseudonym?

By now you may be curious about Hamlet’s posts on this bulletin board. He or she has made about forty posts and three of them referred to me, two during elections, and one in response to my recent blog about the point at which a “church” ceases to be a “church”. That blog was copied by someone on to the site to which I refer, without intending to cause mischief, I feel certain, but that was not the result. The law of unintended consequences was in operation!

My blog was described by someone as an “extra-ordinary rant” — such a response might be the bulletin board equivalent of road-rage, and I can’t help wondering why so many people seem to be so angry so often and about so many things. Hamlet responded by posting this:

“Unfortunately this is far from being an "extra"ordinary rant from a man who somehow manages to alienate a substantial proportion of people who come across him. I actually blame his careers' tutor since he shows little aptitude, (as one professing a Christian faith), to be anything other than self serving.”

Well, that was certainly sobering, but I recalled one of his earlier posts when I stood, unsuccessfully, against the excellent David Graves for Alderman of Cripplegate. Hamlet then wrote:

“I have been tempted to move to the Cripplegate ward simply to vote for David Graves who has been a staunch supporter of the residents of the Barbican. I have never met Mr Graves but I have had dealings with Rev'd Dudley and I thank Mr Graves for his candidacy -'nuff said.”

Someone asked Hamlet to tell what these dealings were but there was no response to the invitation. One earlier post, also at election time, in 2005, carries a similar message:

“I will admit to being favourably inclined to vote for an "outsider" rather than at least one of the standing residents (who has proven to be arrogant, officious and deeply unpleasant).”

I should like to know what I did to attract such venom from the person who is concealed by the pseudonym Hamlet. If I knew I might be able to remedy the fault and apologise, if appropriate, or else, perhaps, to justify my actions, whatever they were. But if Hamlet prefers to allow the offence to fester like an unhealed wound, to make it a source of poison, and to strike at me from time to time sheltered by the pseudonym from recognition and from all possibility of dealing with this estrangement, then it must be thought that like Shakespeare’s character he or she prefers introspection and melancholy, and should accept the appropriate internet label “anonymous coward”.

When does a "church" cease to be a church?

It is ages since I have written my blog - for which I must apologise. I kept meaning to, but I had a list entitled "Things to do before going to Egypt" and it kept me completely occupied. Then I went to Cairo, Sinai, Aqaba, Madaba, the Jordan, Galilee, Nazareth, Bethlehem, and Jerusalem, and I am still processing the hundreds of photographs that I took on my travels.

My question doesn't concern redundant churches or those that no longer hold services but one that continues to advertise itself as a church, and not as a community centre, but which seems to have given up being in anyway a sacred space. I live right next to it and my thoughts were triggered by a posting on a community website. It explained that after a very enjoyable Scottish dancing evening, it was now proposed to have ballroom dancing on a Friday early evening because "the church is such an excellent space for dancing".

Then I opened the latest residents' magazine which announced that Vocality, a Surrey-based singing organisation, is bringing its expertise to the City and forming a new choir. A free taster workshop was announced for a Thursday lunchtime. The church is clearly an excellent space for singing everying from gospel to pop, slave songs to folk songs, jazz to world music (I quote the announcement). It will be run by Vocality Singing which is a business and a limited company; there are fees to pay to sing and terms and conditions.

The residents' magazine had a whole page devoted to events at the next door church in June and July: a Friends of City Churches walk, a concert by the Apollo Orchestra in conjunction with the Barbican Library, an organ recital, a City of London Festival event, a chamber choir prmoting 21st century sacred music, another chamber choir, the Guildhall School of Music New Music festival, a BBC Singers concert and, indeed, a couple more concerts. Other advertisements around the place point to a book fair in the church and I voted there in the European elections when it was a polling station.

But where is Christianity in all this? There is no mention of the Holy Trinity, Corpus Christi, St John the Baptist or St Peter & St Paul. The Church's website does list services - Morning Prayer said Monday to Thursday, two Eucharists on Sunday, a once-a-month Family Service, and said Evening prayer on Sunday afternoon. Rather a small religious offering compared to the concerts, the organ school, the dancing, the choirs, the book fair, the rehearsals.

The mission statement says, among other things, we will "remind the community of the church in their midst by ringing the bells". But to what end? Not to call to prayer. The website declares it to be "a quiet place" but it seems to have become a place of incessant noise and activity, and it is available for hire, daytime or evening, seven days a week!

By now you are probably thinking that this is Dudley sounding off about a church he doesn't like. Actually I do quite like it; it is a reasonable post-war rebuild of a late medieval church and in sunshine it looks splendid. Well, it would look splendid if it wasn't for an altar on wheels, mobile stalls, a surfeit of organs, a semi-permanent book fair in one aisle, and a general sense of clutter. It has become a hall for hire. If it ever had the sense of being a holy place, it has it no more. Perhaps that was inevitable. It once had a busy street passing its door but post-war redevelopment has left it stranded. Perhaps all these activities are necessary to get people through the door at all, but I have yet to be persuaded that concerts, even of religious music, do anything to promote the mission of the Church. And if you think that is just me sounding off there's nothing I can do about it.

Have a look for yourself: www.stgilescripplegate.org.uk

What can I expect from an Anglican Church?

"Living the Faith" was a little booklet that I produced for the church bookstall in 1999. Selling at £1 or £1.50, it contained some notes on the basics of Christian belief, a catechism, the text of the creeds, a list of the books of the Bible, a list of the provinces in the world-wide Anglican Communion, and two lists - one headed "What can I expect from an Anglican Church?" and the other "What would an Anglican Church expect of me?"

I am now revising the text for a new edition. I don't recall the origin of the list headed "What can I expect from an Anglican Church?" As with so much that I use, it probably began with someone else's list, perhaps an article in Episcopal Life, and I reworked and developed it. What interests me is whether it should still carry this title. I know that this is what you can expect at St Bartholomew the Great. I'm sure that you shouldn't expect it at either St Helen's, Bishopsgate, or St Michael's, Cornhill. Here is the list anyway:

1. A local Anglican Church will be a community of believers which accepts others as they are and does not attempt to force them into a pre-determined mould or model.

2. It accepts and tolerates a wide range of beliefs and attitudes both inside and outside the Church.

3. What is authoritative for Anglicans is discerned from within the church, taking account of Scripture, the tradition of the Church, and the use of reason. Authority does not come from outside, from an infallible book or an infallible teacher.

4. The focus of the Church is liturgical forms of worship which celebrate and express the faith of the believing community and facilitate God’s action within it, rather than dogmatic teaching.

5. Anglican teaching has more to say about the goodness of God’s creation than about the sinfulness of humankind. Rejoicing in the creating and saving work of God, it takes sin seriously without becoming neurotic or despairing.

6. Anglicans are, usually, able to laugh at themselves, at their traditions and at the pomp and trappings of church life, while being serious about the need for God and the way in which the Church brings us closer to God.

7. Doubting and questioning are legitimate and acceptable parts of being Anglican.

8. Belief in God and love and concern for neighbour go hand in hand and are equally important.

Bishops and Pheasants

How should one address the Bishop of London? Sydney Smith (1774-1845), who was a canon of St Paul's from 1831, wrote to Bishop Blomfield in 1837; he said this:

My dear Lord,
I hope there was no incivility in my last letter. I certainly did not mean that there should be any; your situation in life perhaps, accustoms you to a tone of submission & inferiority from your Correspondents, which neither you, nor any man living will ever experience from me.

I wish I had found this letter earlier. It is not in the comprehensive Letters of Sydney Smith, published in 1953, but in the appendix to the volume St Paul's in its Glory by G.L. Prestige (bought in the very well stocked second-hand bookhop in Great Malvern). Incidentally Smith concludes his letter with words I could use myself:

I remain my dear Lord with respect, your obedt. Servt., Sydney Smith

There were huge numbers of dead pheasants on the roads of Worcestershire, Gloucestershire and Herefordshire, suggesting a large living population, and many pubs carried the name The Pheasant. Smith wrote to someone in 1841 to acknowledge a friendly gift of pheasants:

Many thanks, my dear Sir, for your kind present of game. If there is a pure and elevated pleasure in this world, it is the roast pheasant and bread sauce - barn-door fowls for dissenters, but for the real churchman, the thirty-nine times articled clerk - the pheasant, the pheasant!
Ever yours,
Sydney Smith

How lonely sits the City

Every Good Friday the Butterworth Charity service takes place in the churchyard of St Bartholomew the Great. This is what I said this year:

“How lonely sits the City that was full of people!” laments Jeremiah, “How like a widow she has become, she who was great among the nations. She who was a princess has become a slave.”

Jeremiah has much to say about Jerusalem that can equally be said of the City of London, the City financial, in these troubled days. And those who first administered this Butterworth Charity knew what was involved in being a widow at a time when women, especially women of the middle classes, were not, and could not be, financially independent. To be a widow meant being dependent on others, on more distant members of one’s own family, if they had anything to spare, on the Church, on the parish, on the overseers of the poor.

The Prayer Book litany easily identifies those at risk, those in need of prayer and charity — all women labouring of child, all sick persons, and young children, the fatherless children, and widows, and all that are desolate and oppressed. The poverty addressed by the parish charities was absolute, in the absence of all state aid. As the state increasingly provided resources, the parish charities lost their immediate reason for existing. A number of them were amalgamated and formed into a new body called the City Parochial Foundation. Its offices are in this parish, just along Cloth Fair, into Middle Street. What is its purpose? This is what the website says: “The City Parochial Foundation aims to enable and empower the poor of London to tackle poverty and its root causes, and ensure that our funds reach those most in need.”

But like so many endowed charities — for it received the endowments of the countless small and large parochial charities — it is suffering in the financial crisis. Its resources are diminished. Its ability to aid the poor reduced. And 150 years after the overseers of the poor had to be make difficult decisions here in this poor and populous parish, outside the City walls, the trustees of CPF — and I am one of them — recognise the truth of Jesus’ own words “The poor you have always with you.”

The responsibility in the end comes back to us. In her “History of Jerusalem”, Karen Armstrong explains that religion must have an ethical dimension and the test of true spirituality is practical compassion. “This,” she says, “also applies to the spirituality of a holy place. Crucial to the cult of Jerusalem from the very first was the importance of practical charity and social justice. The city cannot be holy unless it is also just and compassionate to the weak and vulnerable.”

Jeremiah thought that Jerusalem had fallen to her enemies because she had forsaken God and done it in a most practical way — denying justice, subverting lawsuits, crushing the prisoner under foot, shedding the blood of the righteous. And he puts forward a requirement and a challenge to us all on the day of the Lord’s atoning death: “Let us test and examine our ways, and return to the Lord!”

An Easter message?

Oliver Ross, the new Area Dean of the City of London Deanery, has contributed the front page article to the April edition of the publication now managed by the Friends of the City Churches, called “City Events”, available in hard copy and online. It purports to be an Easter message; it is nothing of the sort. The text of his message is given in italics and indented with my commentary in regular type.

The great cry of the Bible and of the Christian Faith is that Jesus is Lord. There is no halfway house or equal division between good and evil. While there is no denying the reality of suffering, difficulties and wickedness, the Bible proclaims that in the end Christ is all, in all and through all and will embrace a creation renewed. No magic wand but a steady reclamation.

What was the first Christian profession of faith? In Acts 2, it concerns Jesus “delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God,” crucified and killed, whom God “raised up”. Peter says that he and the other disciples are witnesses of this. “This Jesus whom you crucified,” Peter declares, “God has made both Lord and Christ.” The Gospel involves death, resurrection and the definitive action of God. When Philip the Deacon encounters the Ethiopian eunuch, the question of faith is raised in relation to baptism. “Is there any reason why I should not be baptised?” Philip is asked and some manuscripts have him say “If you believe with all your heart you may.” The eunuch responds “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.” Paul will subsequently stress a different basic statement that, as Mr Ross, says “Jesus is Lord”. This is based on his humility, his emptying himself being “obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” So Jesus the Christ, the Son of God, who died and rose from the dead is Lord “to the glory of God the Father.” It is not “the great cry” — that Christ is risen from the dead is the great cry and it follows from his saving death.

And what of “suffering, difficulties and wickedness”? Between Christ’s death and resurrection and the fulfilment of his promises at the “end time”, when history passes into eternity, we are in the “mean time”. The victory is won but its working out is not yet accomplished. It is in some ways a halfway house, just as the Church, the community of the redeemed, contains wheat and tares, saints and sinners. We have not yet reached the harvest time. There is no equal division, indeed at times it looks as if there is a profound inequality, with Christian believers a misunderstood and persecuted minority, a remnant awaiting rescue. But Christianity is eschatological, focussed on the end time and the moment of completion when Christ will, at last, be all in all. The whole creation groans in travail, as Paul says. There is no magic in Christ’s saving work but neither is there “steady reclamation” — quite the opposite, the world must be lost before heaven is found.

Mr Ross cannot resist a reference to the financial crisis, even though Christianity has no concern with earthly treasures.

At this time of financial difficulty it is easy to feel that we are the prey of forces far greater than we can control. But however deep the recession, however low the stock market goes, however high the price of gold rises, the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it. And Jesus is still Lord. No magic wand but a steady reclamation.

What can this mean? Finance, recession, stock market, the price of gold — none of these have any relevance to the work of salvation. “How the gold has grown dim,” laments Jeremiah, “how the pure gold is changed!” His is a vision of the lonely city that was once full of people; the city that was a princess has become a slave. Jesus is Lord and part of his lordship is that he will come again in glory “to be our judge”. We need only think of his references to Jonah preaching in Nineveh, and bringing about conversion, or to the comparison between the cities of his day and Sodom and Gomorrah, to the clear advantage of the latter. Judgement is the clear teaching of Scripture; not “steady reclamation” but the possibility of condemnation.

What is the root of our confidence? We believe that Christ rose from the dead. We hold that this is a historical fact: no less mysterious for its being historical and no less historical for its being mysterious. This was no “conjuring trick with bones”. The evidence of the Bible points to the shattering surprise that it was to the disciples, with the confusing element that Jesus made his resurrection appearances.

Mr Ross now turns to the root of our confidence (though it is not clear how confidence in the future of the financial City can be based on Christian faith). We believe, he affirms, that Christ rose from the dead. It is an historical fact, though mysterious, and he quotes the line of Bishop David Jenkins who held that the resurrection was a powerful myth, a story laden with meaning, but definitely not a conjuring trick with bones. We can certainly argue over the possible proof of the resurrection, indeed over whether proof is necessary, when Jesus blessed those who, not seeing the evidence (as Thomas did), would believe in him. The original ending of Mark’s Gospel, using the words “alarmed”, “trembling”, “astonishment”, “afraid”, and with the women who “said nothing to anyone” about the empty tomb, demonstrates the real amazement that Jesus had risen.

Paul writing in the first Letter to the Corinthians (15: 6 ) states that “Then he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.” If those to whom the letter is addressed found it difficult to believe they could find a number of that 500 who were still alive and question them.

A theory for the disappearance of Christ’s body from the tomb is that there were grave robbers; very foolish grave robbers taking the worthless body and leaving the valuable spices behind? Another is that the disciples stole the body; a small group of scared disciples overpowered a well-trained military unit set to guard the tomb against such an event? The disciples were good Jews. As good Jews they would have upheld the three main tenets of Jewish life at the time – the food laws, circumcision and the Sabbath. It must have been something of cataclysmic cosmic proportions that made them change the Lord’s Day from the Sabbath/Saturday to Sunday, the day of Jesus’ rising.

An argument always looks weak when it has to be bolstered and buttressed. First the 500 are called as witnesses. Then a theory for the theft of the body is put forward, grave robbers or the disciples themselves. The suggestion of grave robbers is a new one to me, though I see it is dealt with in similar terms online in the Wikiversity without references, and in a more scholarly manner, not lacking in humour, in http://www.tektonics.org/gk/graverob.html. The argument of theft by the disciples was dealt with in Matthew 28:11-15 long ago. The emergence of Sunday is not a strong argument for the resurrection but for the need for the new community of Jews and Gentiles, soon to be called Christians, to have a distinctive identity based on non-Jewish practices. None of these so-called proofs are likely to persuade anyone of the reality of Christ’s resurrection.

In the City of London we have our own testimony to the fact that there is more, whatever circumstances may throw at us. In 1666 the Great Fire consumed all but eight of the churches. From the ashes the new St Paul’s arose; Resurgam was the message upon the stone that Sir Christopher Wren found. Out of the ashes across the City many churches arose. The glories of mediaeval London were destroyed but the life of London moved forward, the church of London moved onwards, and the Gospel was passed from generation to generation down to ourselves.

Mr Ross now executes the “City turn” as a way out of a failing argument and on this we need to be quite clear. The rebuilding of the City of London after the great fire of 1666 has no theological significance. It does not indicate definitively that there is a more of some sort. It may illustrate the rule that people, of every religion and none, rebuild their cities after destruction if they can, and abandon them if they can’t. Neither post-fire nor post-war rebuilding contributes to the religious or theological argument. The resurrection of Christ is, in religious terms, a defining moment for humankind and must not be reduced or trivialised by analogy to any other resurrection-like event. The Great Fire might be an argument for belief in the phoenix and what it represents, a human belief, pre-dating Christianity, in regeneration, for belief in after-life of some sort clearly exists in other religions.

We as Christians within the City are Trustees of our Christian heritage within the church buildings, be they mediaeval or from the hand of Christopher Wren or Hawksmoor. More importantly we are the trustees of a Gospel that is older than the buildings, and when the buildings turn to dust and ashes the Gospel still goes on. The Gospel proclaims that Christ is risen.

This is, of course, the publication of the Friends of the City Churches and that may justify a reference to the buildings, but the buildings themselves are only significant in a religious sense if they witness to the faith that inspired their construction or assist in the presentation of that faith to visitors and pilgrims. If a church building has become a concert hall, if its bells ring out to delight bell-ringers but not to call to prayer, if it becomes merely a heritage site, then it may be a counter-sign. At last Mr Ross comes near the real point. We are, he says “trustees” of a Gospel — a curious expression suggesting conservation rather than proclamation. We are, more accurately, ministers of the Gospel and stewards of the mysteries of God. The gospel is the good news and as such it is to be proclaimed. The gospel does not proclaim that Christ is risen; the gospel is the saving death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

Christ is risen though recession may come. Christ is risen though we may face traumatic difficulties in finance and family. Christ is risen and so there is more, not only to the story and not only to our lives here on earth: with Him we also shall rise. The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it and, like Job (19: 25), “I know that my Redeemer lives and that at the last He shall stand upon the earth”.

That Christ is risen is a basic Christian statement of faith. No event or experience changes that, but that is true of objective historical events of any sort. Caesar was assassinated, William of Normandy was crowned King of England, Napoleon died on St Helena — all these remain true despite recession and traumatic difficulties, but they also have a “so what?” factor, whereas the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ impinges on the lives and expectations of Christians with regard neither to wealth nor family — both these aspects of living come under Christ’s censure — but with regard to matters of ultimate concern. Why cite Job at this point when Paul says it all? “Christ is risen from the dead : and become the first fruits of them that slept. For since by man came death : by a man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die : even so in Christ shall all be made alive.”